


A Miracle of Space and Time

by Boothia



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Romantic Comedy, Comedy, F/F, F/M, M/M, Multiverse, Not Canon Compliant - Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-02
Updated: 2019-10-22
Packaged: 2020-04-06 12:54:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,464
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19063108
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Boothia/pseuds/Boothia
Summary: We all exist in a multiverse, but Narcissa Malfoy doesn't take that into consideration when she makes an Unbreakable Vow to protect her son.Featuring dumb bits, real emotions, and deep-dives into epistemology.





	1. The Vanishing Cabinet (or The Dressing Room Within a Dressing Room)

“Now I know, I know this is dark, but there’s a difference between wanting to die and just not wanting to be alive, there’s a fundamental difference. And that difference is, of course - say it with me now?” He paused, feeling the heat of the stage lights and the silent anticipation of the crowd. With a wave of his arm on each syllable, he graciously drew them all in.

“Or-gan-i- _za_ -tion, yes that’s right, you’ve got it!”

The audience laughed nervously.

“Oh don’t be shy, you’re all terribly smart people, I can’t pull any punches with you. I mean literally, I can’t pull any punches with you. Look at me: I look like what would happen if someone genuinely managed to frighten a piece of spaghetti.” He paused for a brief chuckle, then did his wide eyes and ‘frightened spaghetti arms’ that always took the chuckle to a laugh.

“Right? You had no fucking idea what ‘frightened spaghetti’ looked like until just now, did you? Well congratulations, this is it. As my ex used to say, ‘take it all in’.” Using his lean, pale limbs to his advantage, he struck his ‘proud frightened spaghetti’ pose that always got a bigger laugh, then strutted wobbly about, making noises somewhere between confident and terrified. He looked at the man in the front row who’d made the mistake of heckling him near the beginning of his set. 

“Don’t worry David, your wife described the last meal you made for her as, and I quote, ‘very brave’, so well done.” He held his gaze with David as the bigger laughs shifted gear into whoops and applause.

“But enough about us, sweet David, we’ve been so rude to everyone else. Let’s get back to death!” The laughter washed over him like buoyant salt water, and as he ran his fingers through his blond hair and smiled at the audience, he knew they were ready to go wherever he took them.

—

“So it’s the flobberworm mucus and not the lavender that gives Angel’s Trumpet Draught its distinct hue,” Draco said, barely remembering to gesture at the slide behind him before trying to wave on to the next one. “Now, as you can see - ” 

The slide didn’t move. “Now as…” He tried again. “As you can - ” The slide remained steadfast. “As you can see…” From the back of the classroom Slughorn nodded and smiled encouragingly, and Draco did his best not to sink dramatically as possible into the ground.

 _I hate this_ , he thought, looking at the projector. _This is stupid and I hate this._

Since Slughorn had taken over Snape’s former position as Potions Master, Draco had found his investment in the class to be…well, 'waning’ was a kind term. First it was Slughorn’s inexplicable non-devotion to the Slytherins despite being an alumnus of the great house; then it was Potter’s even more inexplicable brewing abilities, which had caught Slughorn’s eye to the point Draco could barely receive the attention he most _assuredly_ deserved; and now, now that he did have Slughorn’s undivided attention, now it was this, the ultimate denigration. Now, it was class presentations.

Never mind he certainly didn’t need to deliver information in front of the student body as that’s what, oh, say, _having professors_ were bloody well for, but how was he expected to know how to work a projector? Yes, Slughorn had offered a tutorial, but so what? That was only once, and that was weeks ago, and it wasn’t Draco’s fault he had quite a bit much more on his _mind._

“Now as you can _see_ ,” Draco ground out as he waved his wand with a curt fury at the projector, which immediately lurched forward three slides, setting rippling laughter across the Gryffindor quotient of the room. Cheeks burning and curses rumbling in his throat, Draco began to physically wrestle with the projector.

“Ah, Mr. Malfoy, that’s a delicate piece of equipment,” Slughorn said, barely hiding his own smile. “Do you require assistance?”

“No, _thank_ you Professor, I can handle this on my own."

“He’ll have to now that Father can't hear about this in Azkaban,” Seamus said under his breath to Harry. 

Of course, Seamus’ version of ‘under his breath’ was akin to the everyman’s ‘obvious stage whisper’, and of course, the dungeons were made entirely of stone, so of course, the laughter had died down just in time for Seamus’ words to echo across the room like a ringing bell. Draco froze, and so did the temperature of the class.

There was an awfully long moment of quiet. Draco tensed his hands on the projector.

“Mr. Finnigan, that was uncalled for and deeply inappropriate,” Slughorn said with practiced calm. “Five points from - ”

In a swift movement, Draco crashed the projector to the ground, stalked to his desk, and shoved his books in his bag.

“Mr. Malfoy!”

“Not to worry Professor,” Draco said through clenched teeth, making sure to accidentally smack the nearest Gryffindor as he swung his bag on his shoulder, “my _family_ will be happy to pay you for the projector’s repairs. And as I’m sure this will necessitate detention, please, do owl me at your earliest convenience.”

With that, Draco Malfoy opened the door of Potions class, strode out purposefully, and slammed it behind him. A heavy silence blanketed the room. Just as Professor Slughorn was about to speak, the door opened again.

“And by the way?” Draco spat, “No one knows if Angel’s Trumpet Draught is a poison or an anti-venom, which is _incredibly_ stupid, because _why_ make something if we don’t know how it works?!”

The door slammed again. Slughorn made his way to the front of the class and gingerly picked up the remains of his projector.

“My dear students, would that Mr. Malfoy was still here. For not only would I tell him he’s lost his house 20 points - ” the Slytherins groaned “- but I’d answer his question.”

“So you know how Angel’s Trumpet Draught works?” asked Blaise.

“Oh no, absolutely not!” replied Slughorn. “You see, we make what we don’t understand in order to eventually understand that which we choose to make.” 

Harry looked at Ron. Ron looked at Hermione. Hermione looked at Ron and Harry. With a sigh, Hermione raised her hand.

“Yes, Miss Granger?”

“Do you mean that in an epistemological sense?”

“As far as I know I do! Could you kindly define that for us, Miss Granger?”

“Essentially it’s…well, how do we know what we know? If we don’t know something, but we don’t know we don’t know it, how can we hope to understand what it is we _do_ know when the parameters of what we _don’t_ know are incomplete?”

He smiled at Hermione, placed the broken projector on a high shelf, and gave it a gentle pat. “How indeed. Five points to Gryffindor, which brings today’s tally for your house to a respectable zero. Well! I suppose class presentations are off for the time being, shall we play a round of Exploding Snap? Oh, by the by Mr. Finnigan, your detention is this Saturday.”

—

“So here’s the thing about my family,” he said, taking a swig from his water bottle, “here’s the thing. A lot of families care if you’re, I dunno, say, _gay._ ” He gestured to the rainbow emblazoned on his jumper. “But not my family, no. My family cares if I’m _classy_. So! Gay, as we all know, can either be very classy or…” He pressed the rainbow on his jumper. It lit up, and when he held the microphone to it, a midi compression of A Little Respect by Erasure started playing. He slid his chin down until his mouth met the microphone. 

“Very _gayyyyy_.” He allowed the song to play for as long as they laughed.

“But the thing is, despite being from a little place called England - you might have heard of us, we ruined the world? - despite being from England, I’m easily ‘Southern Gothic classy’. I come from money, but I also come from mystery, or as us British Southern Gothics call it, ‘a Kate Bush song’.” He drained the last of his water bottle and winked at a familiar face in the audience. “I told you we were gonna get back to death, didn’t I, David? Welcome to 9:45 pm in the Garden of Good and Evil, brother.”

—

Draco wasn’t sure if it was his personal desperation or the several physical kicks that opened the doors to the Room of Requirement, but either way, there it was and there he was. He picked his way through to the Vanishing Cabinet and ran his hand over its smooth varnish, pausing his grip on the handle of the door.

—

“My friends and lovers, I’ve been Draco Malfoy, thank you so much for tonight!” he said to rapturous applause. “Let me know if you have a restaurant, I'll give you a decent Yelp review!” He took another bow and made his way stage right.

—

“Okay,” Draco said in front of the cabinet. He took in a deep breath. “Alright.”

—

“Brilliant show!”

“Thanks love,” Draco said as he rounded the corner to his dressing room. “Mind picking me up a - oh sweet gentle _Jesus_ what is that?”

“Um,” his assistant said as they both saw the imposing black box at the same time, “I guess it’s...a dressing room?”

“In a dressing room?”

“I guess?”

“It’s a dressing room within a dressing room?”

“…I - ”

“You’ve made me go full meta?”

“I - ” 

“My God.”

“Um - ”

_“Thank you.”_

“Oh!” 

He hugged his assistant more tightly than most in his life.

 _“Oh,”_ the assistant said, and hugged back.

“Leave me for now,” he said, transfixed by the cabinet before him. “I’ll find you when you I need you.”

“…are you sure?” the assistant asked, “Because you have a habit of disappearing for no reason - ”

“I have my reasons, I just don’t explain them to you,” he said absently, stroking the cabinet.

“Right. Of course. It’s just that my whole job is to know where you are - ”

“What’s your name?”

“You don’t know my name?”

Draco balked. “Of course I know your name! Do you know my name?”

“Obviously.”

“Obviously! So, I'm just...you know, because, _obviously_ , so...that's why your name is...?"

"Linda.”

“Linda!”

“Yes.”

He stroked the cabinet again. “Linda. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Of course you will,” Linda muttered as she made her way out.

“Okay,” he said, looking at what was essentially an obelisk with doors. He ran his fingers through his blond hair. “Alright.”

—

Okay.

—

Alright.

—

Through a miracle of space and time, they stepped through the doors at exactly the same moment.


	2. A Rubicon Has Been Crossed

He knew it couldn’t be a dream because Draco never went to bed before 3 a.m. unless he’d been drinking heavily, and since he’d stopped keeping booze in the dressing room he never drank heavily until after the show was done.

It was like a long, dark corridor, but it couldn’t have been - the walls and the floor felt like they kept shifting, his legs moved of an accord that didn’t feel entirely his own, and there was a compulsion in his chest that propelled him forward, almost as if a cord had burrowed into his heart and was pulling him onward. Blurs moved on either side of him and the air felt so thick he could swear he was swimming; he tried to make out what the shapes in the blurs were, but as soon as his eyes focused on one picture, it had already melted into something else, and all that was left was an after-impression of colour blocking and vaguely human movement. He had to keep going, though. His body didn’t feel like his body but it moved ever forward and his lungs felt too full.

He was about to call out to something, anything, anyone, but before he could even attempt to use his vocal cords - were they still there? where the fuck was _here?_ \- he saw one image that remained impressively static amongst the bleeding spills at his sides.

It was him.

It was him, and he was so young.

It was him, walking right past, and he could swear for just a second their eyes met, grey on grey. He wanted to reach out, but that cord in his heart tugged harder, and suddenly Draco found himself flying with a bracing force toward a very heavy wall into which he smacked nose-first.

“Oh fuck me,” Draco gurgled as blood trickled down his throat. From that hot pain, that scrambled cartilage, and that one time he was jumped by a group of drunk bros after a particularly rough show in Boston, he could tell it was broken. He spit out a glob near his feet, leaned against the wall, and when the weight of his arms happened to slide effortlessly against a handle that in fact made that wall a door, he fell nose-first into a dusty room.

“Oh fuck _me_ ,” Draco gurgled to the floor. The blood mixed with dust and congealed under his face. He sneeze-coughed and another glob plopped out, so he turned his face aside to see a stack of broken chairs and what looked suspiciously like a gramophone. His first thought was “fuck”, his second thought was “I stopped doing this at 30”, and his third thought, quite quickly, was “I don’t know where I am.”

Because he _had_ stopped doing this at 30, so to find himself passing through what could only be an acid trip into a strange room was…well, that couldn’t be right. Did someone drug him? But no, he’d only had that one beer, and he’d opened it himself, there was no chance anyone could tamper with it, and this didn’t feel like acid. It didn’t feel like GHB either. It felt, if anything - dear God, right in his bones - he felt uncomfortably sober.

Draco brought himself to his feet, snot-coughed another glob to the floor, and rotated his neck. Usually there’d be a crack, but this time he only felt smooth movement. He also felt unusually spry, but the panic creeping up the back of his neck had him shaking too much for him to truly enjoy it.

His nose dripped with each step he took through this strange room, and just as he was thinking of ripping the cuff off his sleeve to stopper it _\- wait, these aren’t my clothes -_ he spied a beautiful handkerchief on the arm of a desiccated sofa. It seemed…somehow, it seemed perfect. Untouched. Holding it under his nose, breathing in a familiar scent _\- I know this smell_ he thought dazedly - and moving through what could only be described as detritus, he was aware what was behind him was that thing. The dressing room within the dressing room. The place with the watery corridor. No, he wasn’t going back in there. But -

“But I should,” he said aloud to himself as he stopped and turned, his nasal passages groaning in complaint with each syllable, and at this the room both physically and visibly shuddered. Draco grabbed a nearby shelf for balance but only succeeded in pulling down several years’ worth of old boots and shinguards to the floor and, incidentally, atop himself.

 _I guess I could die here until I figure things out,_ he thought as the final boot thumped against his head and he passed out for hours.

“Draco?”

He opened his eyes to see a pale face looking over his. She had impossibly blue eyes and an ethereal presence and…

“Nice earrings,” he said.

“Oh thank you! They’re radishes. Are you alright?” He thought about it.

“No, I really don’t think I am.”

“I don’t think you are either. Would you like help?”

He snot-coughed again, but being prone, he choked on it this time. The girl with the pale face and impossibly blue eyes swiftly brought him to a sitting position and Heimliched him until he coughed up not only his clot but a bit of his dinner. It spilled over his shirt _\- this isn’t my shirt - wait this isn’t my dinner -_ but he could breathe again.

“Oh goodness. You best come along with me,” she said. Her voice sounded like wind chimes. “Not to insult the boots and shinguards here. They’ve certainly done their part.”

Draco meant to say a gently panicked _okay?_ but instead he threw up a bit more.

——

Draco flew at the door with so much force he opened it with his body and crashed through a chair and right into a countertop and adjoining mirror.

He knew, he thought, as his body tumbled ungracefully to the ground, that this was a bad idea. It was impulsive. It was the antitheses of everything he was supposed to be doing. He had been so careful in his planning, so meticulous in his repair of the Vanishing Cabinet, why in the Seven Hells would he just _walk through?_ Wasn’t he beyond this? Only a child would allow themselves to become so angry that they’d completely destroy their -

“Jesus fucking Christ!”

Draco looked up through mirror shards and chair bits to a man with both a clipboard and an unfortunate moustache.

“Are you okay? Do you need - wait, do you have coverage? I know you’re British so if you don’t have insurance we can’t - but should I call an ambulance? The club can’t pay for it, but - I mean are you okay?” The man with clipboard and unfortunate moustache seemed incapable of figuring out what to do, and in all fairness, neither did Draco, who quickly stood to his feet despite a terrible feeling of nausea brewing in his stomach.

“Where am I?” Draco asked imperiously. Just as imperiously, he immediately threw up all over himself.

“Oh shit,” the man said, watching the liquid sick sink into Draco’s clothes. “I’m gonna get Linda. You just wait here, okay?” He went to leave, then stopped short to dig a half-drunk water bottle out of his fanny pack and put it on the counter before he disappeared around the corner.

Draco felt dizzy. So dizzy that when he went to put a hand on the counter and he happened to catch a reflection of himself in one of those mirror shards, he saw someone who looked more like his father than him. He squinted: maybe more like his mother. He squinted further and immediately fell to the ground.

Short moments later, a woman with a blunt haircut and also a clipboard - Linda, he could only assume - entered the room.

“Draco?” she asked, concern apparent in her voice. Draco looked up at her, but found he couldn’t move with any particular grace, nor could words issue from his voice. She surreptitiously looked around, then closed the door behind her.

“Draco. And I mean Hogwarts Draco,” she said. “Blink twice if that’s you.” Draco blinked twice, and the woman visibly stiffened.

“Well,” she said, putting the clipboard down. “Welcome to a grand experiment. You of all people.” She stared down at him for a long moment, inscrutable in her expression, before she bent down and brushed shards of glass and chair from his hair. She offered him the bottle from the countertop. “Screw off the cap, it’s fine to drink.” Draco eyed the water bottle, and with a sigh, Linda unscrewed it and took a hearty swig.

“Fine. See? Here, for you,” she said, handing him the water bottle. Draco tried to take it, but fumbled the bottle with his shaking hands, and it spilled over Linda’s blouse.

“Okay,” Linda said evenly, taking back the bottle and dabbing at her top with a handkerchief. “You’ll be here for a while, do you understand? Blink twice if you do.” Draco stared at her.

“I said blink twice if you do.”

Draco blinked twice, then looked back at his reflection in one of the mirror shards on the floor. He really couldn’t decide if he looked more like his mother or his father, but he knew for sure he was older. Much older. Merlin's Beard, he was old.

“Draco. Look at me again.” He did, and she grabbed him by the shoulders. “We’re gonna get through this, you and I.” And then she grabbed him tighter then anyone had in his life. “You and me. It’s always been you and me. You hear me? It’s you and me, and I got you. It’s always been us. No matter where you’ve been or where you’re going, it’s always been us.”

Draco didn’t know this Linda person, but he let her crush her arms around him. It occurred to him he hadn’t said a word.

“I’m here for you,” she said into his ear. “Anything you need.” 

Finally, he managed to say “the loo” before he threw up in her hair.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi, still working on this, just wanted to get something up. Please know it will get more fun and weird and slashy from here. Thanks for reading ya sweet folks.

**Author's Note:**

> Hi friends, thanks for reading! While this is fundamentally a silly story, please know there'll be Actual Emotional Stakes and Character Growth/Development, because hey: we work hard, we play hard, and goddammit we deserve it all.
> 
> See you soon, my sweet dears.


End file.
